


Salt

by orphan_account



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe, Buckynat au, F/M, Golden Age of Piracy, Mermaids, mermaid natasha, sailor james
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-15
Updated: 2015-10-15
Packaged: 2018-04-26 13:53:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5007250
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Short au drabble on what happens when you're James Barnes, born to a legacy of slipping up on the open sea.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Salt

At seven, the stories of seawitches dragging evil men to their deaths are music to Buck’s ears, and he hears plenty of them, since the sailors in the tavern always have new ones to tell. It's not unpleasant, living above his mother's bar, and it induces a healthy understanding of people into him. 'Bloody nosy' are the words Winifred Barnes uses to describe it, 'bloody nosy, just like your father', and James can't argue, because he doesn't remember much of the man whose flintlock pistols are hung proudly above the fire in the tavern. Father was taken by a storm, she tells him, by a great, great squall, exactly the way he would have wanted to go. 

At eleven, the stories of fae under the waves don't entertain him so much anymore; he’s more preoccupied with dreams of what could lie beyond soggy old England, loves to hear the tales of bronzed women and the sands of Havana, and the plunders of schooners and men-of-war with their shorthand names, referred to so affectionately by their sailors; the Laura, the Crown, the Felux, the Eliezer, the Peace.  
There are whispers about the Barnes’ father as he grows older, little words that he isn't supposed to pick up on but does. And over time he comes to realise that Winnie is fooling herself by trying to fool the children because her husband was taken by gunfire for mutiny. And his pistols hung over the fire don't seem so holy anymore. 

One mizzly, peat-scented night, a new brigand of sailors comes to the tavern, and one is older, wiser, the clear leader of the group. A captain. Buck gravitates closer to their table as the night goes on, helps his sister bring drinks over, listens to the man talk about La Boca, Barbary Coast and Tiger Bay. He boasts about the first time he crossed the equator, tells the men the bump he felt crossing the Line, and they laugh when he says that his fellow shipmates baptised him in sea water and fish oil and vinegar, shaved his head with a rusty razor, and tended to the cuts with salt and lime. Buck laughs too, and the man catches him with eyes the colour of grapes, though it's possible the eyes only appear so dark because the tavern is naturally dark, and the man has such black, knotted hair. "You're the Barnes boy," he says, and the fourteen year old has the good honour to stand tall.  
Bucky realises with a jolt that his companions are listening, their conversations gone stale, all too focused on what feels like staring down a tiger as it prepares to jump. So he puffs himself up, stands taller, broadens his shoulders. “I am, sir.”  
Then the captain chews over a gulp of rum and sets the empty cup onto the table, offering a hand to James. "Could use a little skirmisher like you, Barnes."

Four years later, he's done all of the sailing that Captain Paludan has, seen the bronzed ladies and the shores of Havana, and the life is one worth living. Until the Purple Star is left as nothing more than a bleeding, bruised wreck after an attack from a British man’o’war, and all those thoughts of fae and sea demons come back to mind as he’s almost certain arms in the darkness are pulling the oars of their fishing boats back. When the singing begins, Steven is one of the first to lock eyes with a pale-faced beauty, and the beckon of her finger makes his throat ache with a sob and hunger and thirst and desire, all of the bloody lot, and nothing can stop him from climbing out of the boat and into the salty water to join her.

*******

They've been watching from the sand for nearly an hour now, and Natalia's stomach is beginning to beg with hunger. But Marizhe bears her teeth every time someone flinches towards the water, so they wait. Must wait. Will wait. Cannot break her law.  
Then, as the sun begins to set, the sea becomes alight with a different sort of flame as the battle is won. Boatloads of sailors begin to set off for land, leaving their crumbled dying vessels behind, their lanterns illuminating the way- but providing perfect targets for the sisters. All seventeen leave the beach on Marizhe's command, and after that, it's every mouth for herself.  
Some of the girls go to the more isolated boats, surfacing to sing their song and pull a shell-shocked sailor over the edge. Marizhe still has a scar in her shoulder where one of them shot at her, his grief and shock forbidding him from wanting her, so she's happier to pick at the bones of the warm bodies already filtering down through the water. Natalia appears silently at the side of a boat, all bright dewy eyes and rouged cheeks, reaching a hand up to lay it gently on the lap of a sailor. Her eyes are huge, innocent, trustmetrustmetrustme. He looks at her in fear at first, but it melts and he lets out a breath. All it takes is a press of her nails into his knee and he scrambles into the water with her, and the men around him are too tired, too battle worn to even notice as she drags him down, a hand on the back of his neck and the other wrapped around his hips, her lips a hair's breadth from his own, before she tilts suddenly and bites into his neck. The water mingles with his blood and the sailor thrashes, his last breaths bubbling mockingly up as she clamps her teeth and tears away, producing a gorgeous cloud of crimson. The blood is iron and salt. Natalia chews as it clears, watching the last few bubbles of air leave his lungs. His body jerks, and she swallows, before leaning in again. Her fingers move to pry the neck open, one hand pulling the jaw up. 

Evonnia, the widow, follows her and strokes her claws along Natalia's scales to announce her presence. When the blonde passes her she gives Natalia a too-wide smile. She's blood drunk already, trying to challenge her. Evonnia always is after there's a war. Nat takes the invitation. The fairer of the two surges up and wraps her arms around a blond floating on the surface, pulls him down easily, but what Natalia doesn't expect next is the man that dives down after them. She grabs him before he can get close and they struggle for a couple of seconds before he shoots back to the surface, kicking a foot into her stomach.  
He looks like Evonnia's last lover. The captain who was covered in his own blood and riddled with gunshot.

As the blonde takes her prey down to the depths, Natalia keeps the stranger pressed to her, tail curled tight around his legs, holding his head just above the waves. She breathes with him, waiting until her sisters' chirps and calls below the water grow more distant. He is still fighting her, calling a word she doesn't recognise. A name, perhaps. It doesn't matter. He'll do just fine when the time comes, as leftovers. Natalia claps her hand over his mouth and nose and pulls him under the water, but only to swim towards land, to the little sandbank which has now been abandoned. When she pushes him onto the shore he's unconscious, and she's tired enough from the struggle to pass out next to him in the darkness. 

*******

Waking with a jolt, James’ throat is raw as he sucks in breath, but the pain in his chest is more demanding. He tries to calm his breathing, waits until his chest has stopped protesting at the heave of air in and out before he opens his eyes. The sun is heavy, blinding overhead, and he already feels sweat on his brow despite his clothes being uncomfortably damp when he moves. Then the sweetest voice he’s heard drifts through the wind, like a siren’s call-- he manages to push himself to sit up, and presumes he must be dead when he does. There’s a woman sitting down the beach a little, sunning her flawless brown skin, singing softly, and.. naked as the day she was born. He feels a pull in his gut, but then she lets out a laugh, rich, dark, breaking the spell. She turns her head to look at him, still grinning with a mouth full of fangs. 

“Look,” she tells him sweetly, and he does, in time to see a fishing boat carrying two men smash into rocks like it’s made of nothing but glass. She laughs again, softer this time, and it subsides into a giggle before she pushes herself to her feet. At his lack of admiration for the act, her amusement turns to concern, then curiosity. “I saved your life,” she offers next, but her voice sounds all wrong, velvety, throaty. Coarse with salt.


End file.
